


Cornflake Girl

by sajere1



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hunter Jessica Moore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29049513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajere1/pseuds/sajere1
Summary: When her boyfriend leaves on a weekend trip with his estranged brother, Jessica’s feelings are tumultuous, but normal - mundane, routine worries, complex but familiar.Then, two days after his departure, Jessica comes home to find Sam pinned to the ceiling.The life she’d built in literal ashes, Jess has only one lead: the mysterious hunting trip Sam went to rescue his father from, and his brother, Dean, the last person Jess saw him with. But in her search for answers, Jess learns more about her boyfriend than he ever would’ve shared – a world, and a life, that he had kept hidden from her, one that she won’t be able to leave once she’s stepped in.
Relationships: Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, Jo Harvelle/Meg Masters
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	1. This Is Not Really Happening (You Bet Your Life It Is)

Jessica hadn’t believed in love at first sight before Sam Winchester.

She didn’t really believe in it after Sam Winchester, either, not for a while; what hindsight can pinpoint felt, at the time, like the very natural surprise anyone might have when someone in their class responded to a hypothetical murder case by asking whether the victim’s heart was missing.

“No,” Professor Mullen said very slowly. Jess stared with what she hoped was slightly less than the abject confusion the rest of the class was displaying as Sam (she would only learn his name later; on first sight, he was just Gangly Boy, hair overgrown and limbs too big as he tried to shrink himself in any crowd he came across) squirmed under the attention. His face went red as he realized that this was, apparently, not a typical mode of inquiry. He nodded, bangs falling frantically in his face at the force of it. Professor Mullen resumed his description of the fake murder – an example for the type of cases that a lawyer should or shouldn’t take on – with something between concern and amusement, and eventually, the eyes of the rest of the class returned to the front.

As Jessica watched – the lone person still concerned by the weird freshman with five shirts and a pin made of pure silver he white-knuckles everywhere he goes – Sam slouched in relief, rustling his hair as he glanced around. His face took a minute to lose the red fluster.

When he finally looked up, she made eye contact with him and smiled in a way she hoped was comforting. She was a junior, and the TA – it was her job to make sure that the students were, if nothing else, comfortable in class. His face went pink again and he pointed his gaze sharply towards the front of the room, carefully trying to pretend he wasn’t watching her out of the corner of his eye. It took a moment to pinpoint why his stare felt so different from what she expected. He looked at her, not like she was a pretty girl trying to reassure him, but like she was a threat. Like he had to be careful of her. 

Jess can’t explain, even now, when in that moment it had happened. The weird question. The suspicion. The few weeks later, when Jess was doing her grading and Sam Winchester’s first test was a 105%, but in the margins were notes on historic court cases that read things like ‘Colt – vamps,’ as if he had some hidden knowledge about the cases, something that she couldn’t find anywhere in the textbooks.

But at a party a quarter through the semester, when Brady gestured to her across the room, talking to a big flop of hair that looked panicked as all hell in the crowd, something in Jess’ bones knew. She walked to him with a smile.

* * *

“Wait,” Jess says three years later, leaning against the wall as Sam stuffs shirts in a bag. “You’re taking off?” Sam looks up – looks away. Jess frowns, lips pursed the way they get when Sam is being especially cagey. “Is this about your dad? Is he alright?”

Sam lets out a shaky breath. He discards the shirts for a moment to run a hand over his hair, glancing around the room for more things to pack. “Yeah. You know, just…” Sam snorts. “Just a little family drama,” he says, giving Jess the pleading kind of look they always share between them when it is about Sam’s family.

Jess nods. Jess and Sam’s relationship exists on what would, for any other couple, be intensely shaky grounds. Jess had known Sam has a brother – had formed an idea of him in her mind, based on the things he’d shared, the admiration and appreciation and disdain and disappointment – but she hadn’t had a name for him, not until tonight. It is a policy they had silently agreed to early on, because Sam needs to be able to complain about his father’s oppressive lifestyle without having to explain himself.

Jess has suspicions, of course. She’s not an idiot, and she almost went to law school; she’s capable of forming a logical conclusion. But she chooses not to. For him.

( _You really don’t care?_ Sam had asked, once, with those scrunched up eyebrows and that terribly sad puppy dog look as she fumbled around the room for a bra. _You don’t know anything. They could be_ – He didn’t have to say the word dangerous because it hung in the air between them on its own, a constant weight where Sam kept a police scanner under the bed that he listened to on bad nights, in how he’d insisted on taking her to a shooting range and teaching her the basics on one of their first dates.

And Jess, who had thought about this many times already, because one does not have sex with a man that knows intimate details of the human body’s most sensitive vital organs without acknowledging that he might be into something shady, kissed him sleepily on the forehead and said, _Then I’d rather be in danger. Have you seen my pink bra? With the little bow?_ And they didn’t talk about it again.)

Jess tiptoes around Sam’s family hang-ups in a way she suspects no one has ever respected him enough to do before, allowing him his secrets. In return, Sam barrels through Jess’ family with all the grace of an escaped elephant in a way that she knows no one has ever respected her enough to do before, giving her footing she never had. They work carefully, subconsciously, around each other. It’s a good system.

It also doesn’t mean that Jess can’t worry. “Your brother said he was on some kind of hunting trip,” she says carefully as she takes a seat on the bed, watching Sam with eyes half-hooded in the dim light. She usually tries to keep herself from wondering too much about Sam’s background, or she’ll drive herself crazy and ruin this thing they have going. But this doesn’t sound like someone springing their regular criminal relatives from jail. It kind of sounds like a Most Dangerous Game scenario.

“Oh, yeah, he's just deer hunting up at the cabin. He's probably got Jim, Jack, and José along with him,” Sam dismisses with a wave of his hand. “I'm just going to go bring him back.”

Just going to bring him back? Sam and his father haven’t so much as called on the phone the whole time she’s known him. “What about the interview?” she asks, a little desperate.

“I’ll make the interview. This is only a couple of days.” Sam zips his bag up and hoists it over his shoulder, ducking around the bed.

“Sam!” Jess snaps, snagging his arm before he can move past her. Finally, finally, Sam looks at her, and the moment of vicious victory is swept away instantly by worry at the haunted look that Sam always gets when he thinks too much about whoever he was before Stanford. “I mean, please. Just stop for a second. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” Sam smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. When Jess ducks her head to try to force eye contact again, he juts his chin at her.

A little bit of Jess wants to rail on him for keeping secrets, but that wouldn’t be fair. “I just…” she sighs and lets the fight droop out of her shoulders, lets Sam feel the worry seeping through her fingers and into his arm. “You won’t even talk about your family. And now you’re taking off in the middle of the night to spend a weekend with them? And with Monday coming up, which is kind of a huge deal – “

“Hey.” Jess has never really had a thing for taller guys, but there’s something comforting in Sam pressing his hand to her cheek until she looks up, in the sight of him overlarge and solid and real in front of her. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he promises, with the look in his eyes that says that they’ll talk about this later – when whatever is going on isn’t time sensitive, when he can find the words to explain himself. Jess softens against his hand. “I will be back in time. I promise.” He presses a peck to her cheek.

Then he sweeps out the door. Jess spins in place from the quickness of it, an amused frustration overwhelming her. “At least tell me where you’re going!” she calls after him. She manages a laugh when his only reply is a wave over his shoulder on his way out.

He closes the door, and Jess is left alone in their apartment, heart sinking. She allows herself to worry for about 30 seconds before she takes a deep breath, steels herself, and sets to making coffee, because if she’s already awake this early, she might as well get something done.

The thing is that between their mutual complete distance from their families, Jess and Sam simply aren’t often apart for longer than a few hours. The eerie early-morning emptiness quickly transforms into a much lonelier emptiness as Jess watches the sun rise over her computer screen. She’s almost grateful when it comes time to get to work, setting her coffee aside and shrugging on her uniform before she heads off for her opening shift.

By the time she bounces from the restaurant to the library to home, Jess is so thoroughly exhausted from her jobs that she doesn’t have the energy to be worried anymore. Sam is an adult, she thinks to herself as she crawls into bed alone. And he’s a genius. He’ll call to postpone the interview if he needs longer than the weekend. He’s been handling his weird, potentially-mob-affiliated family since birth. He’ll be fine, she tells herself, staring blankly at the ceiling. He’s fine.

 _Still alive?_ Jess texts the next morning when she can’t bear it any more, sending it quick before she heads out to the library so she can check the phone on the bus.

Within three minutes, she receives: _If I hear one more line of Metallica I am going to rip my brother’s car door off its hinges._ Jess huffs a giggle against the bus window, shoulders relaxing all at once, and leans her head against the window.

_Poor baby. I’ll make sure to have cookies ready when u get back. I’ll even wear a little housewife dress_

_I should not have told you about the apple pie life comment._

_So you don’t want cookies?_

_You’re a cruel woman, you know that?_

Jess tucks her phone away and smiles against the bus seat.

Sundays are nice because Jess always takes the day off if she can, or a shorter shift if she can’t – since Sam is still in school, she always tries to keep a weekend day open, so they can have at least one morning together. Much as she’s eager for Sam to return, there is still part of Jessica that is excited to have the apartment to herself for a few hours.

She’ll have to do the cookies first, because poisoning her boyfriend with acrylics would be a rough way to go, and like hell she isn’t making Sam cookies – she’s been working on the recipe one of the chefs have been teaching her on break for his pastries, and she’s been dying for an excuse to try it on her own. But painting when anyone’s around, even when Sam’s around, isn’t quite the same.

To say Jess is a painter is not quite accurate. She’s never studied. She was a history student, intending to go into law school after graduation – and, since that really didn’t pan out, has spent her time since floating between temporary jobs, trying to nail down a new goal as she wanders hazy through the beginnings of actual independence. She doesn’t sell it. Mostly she doesn’t really do anything with it – doesn’t think it’s good enough to donate or do a gallery or anything, no matter what Sam says.

It just…is. It has always been. When Jess had nothing, she had a canvas and a set of paints. And no one – no one – could tell her what to make out of it.

A psychologist would probably be able to make something out of it, if she could point at pieces and timestamps – the building with no doors on it she painted when she chose her major, the abstract that she ripped in pieces and rearranged until it formed a different, equally incomprehensible image, after she met Sam. The portraits of her mother, many and varied, in all styles, in all stages of Jess’ ability – hyper realistically shaded in one, formed from flowers in another, made up of triangles colored blue and eyes in the wrong places more recently. (Since it’s a hobby, not a job, really, Jess doesn’t feel too bad about imitating famous styles when the mood strikes her. Frida Kahlo is a personal favorite.) But Jess doesn’t let herself think about it too hard. Like Sam’s family. Jess thinks so much, so often. Sometimes she needs space to just be.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been in the zone when she’s roused by the sound of something dripping. She frowns and glances around – she’s only got an hour before Sam texted he’d be home, actually, looking at the clock, so it’s a damn good thing she’s roused in time to make the cookie dough. She starts to put away her brushes, idly smudges the back of her hand over her nose – hears a drip again. Looks up.

The painting – a gun that has been sawed apart and repurposed as a pencil-holder – is pastel, greens and yellows and silvers muted across the lines. There are two deep red drops, still wet, trailing down the middle of it.

Jess looks up.

Sam Winchester is pinned to the ceiling, mouth frozen in horror, blood dripping from his stomach.

Jess screams. She stumbles back, knocks into a table, and screams and screams and screams, as Sam’s eyes follow her, wretched in pain, flame sprouting from the open wound on his stomach.

The flame leaks down and eats the canvas, and she screams, still.

* * *

Jess doesn’t know how she got out of the apartment, not really. She has a vague memory of firefighters pounding on the door, of gloved hands on her forearm tugging her out into the street. None of it is clear. The shock blanket curled over her shoulders is the only thing that feels solid – fuzzy and blue, scrunched between her fingers as police and the fire squad make low conversation nearby, muted in the buzz of the town.

Jess has been learning, over her last few years, how to rely on herself. With Sam’s encouragement, she has become someone proud of her independence – holding down jobs, making decisions for herself, keeping up with a real life. She had been navigating, slowly but steadily, towards a life where she could, if she wanted, live by herself. To be alone.

Jessica Moore has never in her life been as alone as she’s been in this moment.

The sound of a car door slamming startles her. She looks up to see a classic car peeling out of the parking lot – an older car, obviously classic, black. She squints, trying to parse the edges of in the streetlights as it passes her, where she knows the model from.

She catches sight of the driver in the reflection, and she drops her blanket.

She doesn’t realize she’s chasing the car until she’s a full block away – or, perhaps chasing was the wrong word; she didn’t run, too dazed to clearly make a plan, just followed it on fumbled feet, sliding out of view with apparently enough stealth to avoid the officials on the scene.

People don’t just accidentally get pinned to the ceiling, stabbed, and burned alive. It doesn’t happen. Jess isn’t stupid enough to believe that it’s a coincidence it happened to Sam right after meeting up with his estranged, almost certainly violent family for the first time in years. There’s one man who Sam is related to. Who Jess knows, with certainty, can get into her apartment without her noticing. Who knows where Sam went this weekend. Who just drove away from the scene.

“Dean Winchester,” Jess breathes with venom curling her tone as she walks away from Stanford.


	2. She's Gone to the Other Side

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment Jess decides the police can’t be trusted – whether it’s the scoffs at her description of Sam’s spontaneous combustion, or if it’s in between the various attempts to reassure her that she will be safe, like she’s some fragile thing that needs protected, not like she’s pissed and raring and demanding answers – but by the time the FBI sends their second agent along, she is well and truly beyond caring. “What?” she snaps at the agent the moment the door is open.

Another hand hurries to press it further open behind her. “What she means to say,” Becky says in a rush of breath, pushing herself between Jess and the door, “is good evening, officer, would it be possible to come back tomorrow?”

The agent cocks an eyebrow as she glances between them. She’s short, blonde, with something like a bowl cut and a suit that hits as sharp as her cheekbones. “Bad time?” she quips. Her voice is high-pitched, sweet, almost unassuming.

Jess just stares. It takes a moment for her to even notice Becky gently prying her hand off the doorknob. She and Zach are saints, offering Jess a place to stay while she grieves, and she knows she looks exactly the part of the frenzied widower. Her eyes are rimmed red, her hair flayed in all directions like a set of telephone wires crossed through a tornado. She’s wearing borrowed sweats and an overlarge green flannel – Brady had offered it, all akimbo in his own grief, a shirt that Sam had left on accident when they had an all-nighter once; it has no smell, no marks of being his, but the tags are cut out and it fits like it’s been worn under five other shirts at the same time because Sam is (was) a nightmare who had to have eighteen layers at any given moment and Jess had laughed and cried and cried. But she just looks, dead-eyed, at this agent in the front of Becky’s rich-family vacation house.

“We’ve been through a lot today,” Becky offers, gently tugging Jess inside. “A few other agencies sent people over. I’m really sorry, but if you wouldn’t mind – “

The agent’s foot catches in the doorframe, just before Becky closes it on her. “I’m very sorry,” she says, saccharine, “but this is time sensitive. I’m pursuing a very dangerous criminal, and I need to keep going as soon as possible.”

Becky hesitates. “A few hours – “

“I just need five minutes,” the agent pleads, wide-eyed. “That’s all. Just five.”

They stand in an awkward impasse for a moment, Becky unwilling to say no to a federal agent but unwilling to betray Jess in her vulnerable state. Somewhere deep inside the hole of grief she’s dug for herself, Jess feels a surge of thanks for her. She reaches over and squeezes Becky’s arm.

“Show me your files on Sam’s case,” Jess says, jutting her chin out as she stares the agent down.

That seems to genuinely take her aback. “Those are confidential,” she says, frowning, “I can’t just – “

“Then come back tomorrow,” Jess says.

They look at each other for a moment before the agent grits her teeth. “Fine.” She reaches into the bag she’d dropped at her side in her haste to enter. It only takes a moment of rummaging before she thrusts a plain manilla folder into Jess’ chest. Jess swipes inside without a second glance back, leaving Becky to apologize for her as she darts to the living room, collapsing on the couch to thumb through the pages.

The first few pages are psych profiles – for Sam, Dean, and John Winchester, who must be his father from the look of him. Most of the actual information is things that Jess either already knows or has managed to infer from Sam’s bare-bones descriptions: never stayed in one location for longer than a few weeks, raised in motels, the mysterious death of Mary Winchester when Sam was a baby that spurred John’s erratic behavior. A brief criminal record – mostly petty thefts for Dean, a few assault counts for John.

Jess skims her thumb over the picture of Sam. It looks like a school picture, maybe from freshman or sophomore year of high school. His hair looks awful. Jess blinks on a tear.

“So, Ms. Jessica Moore,” the agent says. Jess barely spares a glance up at where she’s taken the seat on the couch across the coffee table before she returns to the page in front of her, leafing past the photos of the other Winchester men with a shaky thumb. “My name is Agent Nicks, and I’m currently on the trail of a man named John Winchester.”

“Why?” Jess says, deadpan, as she looks at the photo they have for Dean. It’s a mugshot. He looks like he must have…hurt his lips? It looks ridiculous.

The agent blinks at her directness. Jess ignores it. She doesn’t have any more patience to be coddled through this. “…because he’s a dangerous man,” the agent says carefully. “Ms. Moore, I’m afraid that your boyfriend may not have been entirely honest with you about his life before Stanford. His family are very dangerous, and you could very well be in danger if – “

“How?”

“How what?”

“How are they dangerous?”

The agent is starting to reflect Jess’ impatience. Some tiny part of her feels vicious vindication at that. “They kill people,” the agent snaps. “John Winchester is a serial killer, and may very well be mob affiliated.” She gestures to the files in Jess’ hands. “Now, I don’t know if Sam was killed by his family for trying to escape or by rivals trying to hurt them, but anything at all you know may be crucial to helping us apprehend his killers. Please.”

Jess traces over a page in the files. It’s not much – just a ripped-out yellow page from Lawrence, Kansas, with one business number circled in red pen.

“Before…the fire,” Jessica says. “On Friday. Sam’s brother came in. Said that their father had been on a – a hunting trip. And that he needed Sam’s help to get him back.” She traces the phone number with her thumb, repeating the numbers over and over in her head in desperate pattern to internalize without revealing it.

“And then?” Agent Nicks prompts.

“He went with his brother,” Jess says, flat. “He said he’d be back by Monday. And that was the last I saw him until…”

Agent Nicks nods. “Can you describe Sam’s brother to me? What he was wearing, any defining characteristics?”

Jessica casts her an odd look. “You have pictures of him right here.”

“I want your description, Ms. Moore, if it’s not trouble.”

Jessica hesitates, peeling carefully through the notes. It’s obvious that this is a file without anything especially incriminating, because Jess, infuriatingly, can’t find anything about what the Winchester family actually does – just that they’re missing. “He drove a…black car. Something classic. Sam said it used to be their dad’s. And…” She purses her lips. “I don’t know. He was…pretty? In a weird way? Kinda pouty-looking? Oh – he had this necklace with some weird symbol on it, I couldn’t tell details but it was, uh, like a face with horns. Leather jacket.”

“Hmm.” Agent Nicks’ brow furrows. Then she nods, sharply, down at her notepad, and closes it. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Moore.”

“Yeah,” Jessica says, distracted as she hands back the folder. She’s too caught up to be suspicious of how few questions the agent had asked – too distracted, even, to noticed the satisfied half-smile on her face as she leafs through her papers. Jess mouths the phone number to herself, over and over again. “Anything to help.”

The moment the agent leaves, Jessica dials Missouri Moseley.

* * *

“Not a party guy?” Jess said, the first time she and Sam spoke – really spoke, not just muttered polite greetings in class.

Sam startled. They’d been standing in companionable silence for a few minutes now, since Brady cheerfully slapped Jess on the back and promised to go grab drinks. That had been nearly ten minutes ago. Jess suspected he thought he was being helpful. “Um,” Sam said, fumbling with his solo cup, trying desperately to look at the walls, floors, anywhere but at her. “Ah – no. More of a – I haven’t been, uh, invited out often.”

It was just a crazy thing to hear, because even with the bowl cut, Sam was blistering attractive, hot and broody and endearingly shy. It spoke a lot to the type of family Sam must come from. Jess nodded like she understood, took a smooth sip of her own drink. “Not big on crowds?”

“Something like that,” Sam muttered, eyes darting around. He stuffed one hand into one of his pockets. He was wearing so many shirts, Jess clocked distantly. He must be so overheated.

“Hey.” Sam blinked, startled, when Jess reached out to him – not touching, just offering to lead. “Want to go outside?”

Sam stared at her with a kind of heightened fear. “I’m fine,” he said, inching away.

Jess put her hand up again, in a gesture of innocence. “I don’t have to go with you,” she offered. “If – just – you look really uncomfortable. If you’re not used to this many people, you don’t have to – to jump in all at once, y’know? You can go outside to take a breather. If having someone there helps, I’d love to go out with you. But if it’s easier to be alone.” Jess offered a little half-smile. “Whatever – makes you comfortable, man. Just – you don’t have to stay here, if you’re miserable.”

Sam stared at her for a long moment, which was fine. There was something weirdly addictive to the way that Sam looked at her with just as much fear as he looked at everyone else. It was a kind of power she could get drunk on, if she let herself, the thrill of someone looking at her and not seeing a fragile blonde in make-up but a threat. But it also, more importantly, was fucking sad. What had this guy been through, that even Jess put him on edge? That he wore eight layers of shirts to a party, needed that much emotional protection?

Jess liked that this guy didn’t underestimate her. But – she didn’t want him to be afraid. No one should be afraid all the time.

Sam finally let out a breath, and Jess smiled encouragingly at it. “…okay,” Sam said, uncertain. “We can – I can go outside. If you want. To come with.”

“Sure,” Jess said amicably.

“Thank you.” Sam squinted at her. “It’s…nice of you to offer.”

The unspoken _assuming you aren’t trying to get me alone to hurt me_ made Jess’ heart lurch in some instinctive protectiveness. Jess wanted, so badly, in that moment, to reach out and touch Sam’s arm, bare, to show him something gentle. But she held herself back. It would make him feel worse, and Jess so badly wanted to make him feel better. “It’s nothing,” she said, and really meant it as she led Sam out the door.

* * *

In 1881, upon the death of her husband, William Wirt, Sarah Winchester inherited a considerable fortune and half of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Sarah Winchester used this fortune to move west, from New Haven, Connecticut, all the way out to Palo Alto, California, and purchased a farmhouse in Santa Clarita. She spent the rest of her life and all her fortune continuously remodeling the house, creating and tearing down sections at her leisure, eventually resulting in a seven-story mansion, more of a twisting labyrinth than a home – staircases that led to the ceiling and stopped, doors that opened to blank walls, rooms stuffed to brim with furniture and rooms bare of anything at all.

Some argue that Sarah Winchester was driven by grief, and the desire to distract herself from the loss of her husband and, not long before him, of her infant daughter. Popular myth argues otherwise.

“Um,” Jess says into the phone.

“Do not interrupt me, Jessica, I said it would come around if you waited, now wait,” Missouri Mosely scolds.

Her voice is tinny, over the phone, but Jessica is more taken aback by – one – the fact this woman knew her name before she even said a word; and – two – that she has yet to get a word in edgewise on this story that, to her knowledge, has nothing to do with anything except that the surname Winchester is involved. “Ma’am,” she says, because she’s a little freaked but she’s not rude, “I’m sorry, but can I ask – “

“If you’ll listen to me I’ll tell you how I know who you are, just wait,” Missouri manages with a general air of put-upon patience. It’s so weirdly domestic and familiar that Jess shuts up on instinct. “Thank you. Now, this house is only about a twenty minute drive form your school, and it ain’t hard to find, thing’s practically a tourist trap by now. They give tours, but you’re gonna want something a little more in depth. You’re a smart girl, you’ll think of something. Now, you go check that house out, and then you call me again if you still want in on this.”

“I’m sorry,” Jess says, when Missouri pauses for breath. “You want me to go look at a museum before you’ll talk to me? Why? Who even are you?”

There is a long pause – long enough that Jess, who knows she must still look half-crazed in her grief, nearly hangs up the phone in her fury. But when Missouri speaks again, this time it is gentler. “Sweetheart,” she says, twinged with something like sadness. “What your boyfriend’s family was up to – it’s not something you’ll believe if I tell you. You have to see it for yourself. And once you see it, you gotta decide for you if that’s something you’re willing to live with, to chase down this killer of yours, or if it’s something you want to lock up and forget. Neither one’s a good choice, honey, but you gotta choose. And to choose, you gotta know.”

Jess rubs her forehead. Missouri sounds sincere, at least, and Jess clings to that – that even if she is about to find out exactly how horrifying Sam’s past was, that she is, if nothing else, being given a soft entrance. “And the type of thing Sam’s family did,” Jess says. “That’s at this…Winchester House?”

“It’s everywhere, Jess,” Missouri says. “That’s just the place you’ll see it.”

So that’s how, less than a day later, Jess ends up in a guided tour of the Winchester Mystery House. She had ended up taking the bus over – Becky had been delighted that she wanted to get out of the house at all, but Jess hadn’t felt too up to explaining exactly where she was headed and why, so instead she’d left with a general ‘going out’ and a promise to text every hour on the hour – and now, at 3 PM, is standing in front of an enormous villa that dwarfs the entire street. It’s only four stories, now; according to Wikipedia, there had been an earthquake at some point in the 1920s that had resulted in enough structural damage to knock a few layers off. Even still, it’s an imposing figure, surrounded in gardens and the easy afternoon heat.

There’s nothing visibly dangerous about the place, if you don’t count the architecture. It looks…well, it looks like a big house in the middle of California. No men in black suits waiting around a corner. No gang members skulking down the street. Just…a house.

“Hello!” chirps the woman at the box office, startling Jess so badly that she nearly jumps into the street. “Would you like a tour of the Winchester Mystery Mansion?”

“Uh – “ Jess fumbles, for a moment, not for anything in particular but just to cling to something; she ends up finding the barrel of her handgun. She doesn’t have any particular inclination to use it – shooting isn’t something Jess had ever done before Sam insisted on her getting a concealed carry permit in a fit of paranoia after one of his late-night binges on the web apparently gave him something to worry about, and even the idea of using it outside of training to appease her boyfriend makes her feel kind of nauseous.

But Sam would’ve brought a gun. And Sam might have been a jumpy bastard in the real world, but she’s entering Sam’s world, now. So, yeah. She has a gun.

“Yes,” Jess says when she realizes she’s been standing in silence too long. “Please. How – how much?”

The shopkeep brightens. “Absolutely, ma’am! It’s $20 per person – you can schedule a day and time or you can wait until one of our guides gets back to take you right away. Tour includes some but not all of the house itself, the gardens, and the gift shop.”

“There’s a gift shop?”

“There is! It’s the final stop on the tour, though you’re free to enter the gift shop without the tour itself.” Jess feels very, very bad for whatever this girl’s boss has said to make her so ungodly chipper.

Jess takes a moment to dig for her wallet before she forks over a 20. “Next tour you have, please.” For good measure, she adds another 5. “And a tip for your help.”

For a moment the girl looks so flabbergasted that Jess feels the sympathy well up in her. She tries to communicate with her smile alone that she has also had retail jobs. After a long moment the girl’s smile returns, more sincere this time. “Thank you! So much! If you’ll follow me, you can wait in the entrance, and I’ll go see how long it’ll be until a guide is back.”

Jess nods her thanks, following with something like curiosity through the wide front gates of the Winchester House. The girls is babbling something that company policy requires of her, but Jess suspects it’s not really a big deal if she doesn’t pay attention. Instead, she takes in the open archways at the front of the house, glancing with mild interest at a few plaques and boards explaining the basics of its history.

It’s not anything new. Jess had done a little research before coming by but hadn’t found anything especially impressive. Mostly, it was famous because it was weird. A lot of its advertising came from the rumors that the house was haunted, and that its odd construction had been the result of spirits’ advice. Jess had examined the statements inside and out, and she hadn’t found any way that these ‘hauntings’ could’ve been a cover for crime – at least not for such a long period of time. She suspected that whatever was actually causing people to think ghosts must have something to do with Sam’s family, though. It’s the only thing the house really distinctively has.

“Wait here for just a minute!” The girl from up front chirps when they step into a room with a pair of old couches on it. Jess smiles politely and sits down. They aren’t the same furniture that was here when Sarah Winchester had lived here – those, as far as Jess could find, had all been auctioned off – but the furniture is all from that period of history, and there’s still something comforting in allowing something old to wrap itself around her. If she had known about this place before she graduated, she might’ve used it in her research. Alas.

It’s at about the twenty minute mark that Jess begins to suspect something’s wrong.

Part of her thinks maybe she should just keep waiting, but another part of her kind of wants a time estimate – if she’d known it would be this long, she would’ve at least gotten a sandwich or something. It’s cinched for her when she sees a flutter of movement and brown hair out the corner of her eye, ducking down a hallway. “Ma’am?” Jess calls, walking to the door. She peaks either way around the corner – frowns when she sees no one near. “Um, excuse me?”

The hallway is a weird one, in a way that Jess suspects all the hallways in the house are weird. There are a pair of doors flush against each other, one about half the height of the other; Jessica steps forward to look at them in bemusement before she sighs and turns around again.

The waiting room is gone.

Jess stares. Where there had been a pair of couches, now there is a long table – a dining room of some sort. Jess glances uncertainly down the hall. Back.

She steps into the room. Another flash blinks out the corner of her eyes.

She looks at the head of the table and there, silvery see through, is the ghost of Sarah Winchester.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the winchester mystery mansion is a real location, and to my knowledge, all non-"an actual ghost shows up and fucks around" info about it is accurate! it is really one of the top ten haunted places in the us, and it is really only about 20 minutes from stanford. you can get online tours. i almost paid for one so that i could be accurate to the house's actual blueprints before i was like. no. no im not gonna do that.
> 
> becky and zach are from 1x06, when sam's college friend is accused of murder. brady i think is mentioned in ~s5? and the agent is probably a character you can guess, and if not, will be revealed very soon!

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song cornflake girl by tori amos (and chapter titles as lyrics from that song).
> 
> not sure how far in i'm going to follow this plotline. i just know that rewatching spn has reasserted just how much better every woman in spn deserved. so im uh. giving them better. Hello
> 
> catch me yelling abt this (and various other spn lady protag aus) on my tumblr @pechebbeche


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